STORIES, STORIES, EVERYWHERE

Those who followed our emails throughout the summer and fall know that Wally and I served in The Gambia, Ireland, and more recently in churches on the West Coast of USA.     All along the way we picked up stories. This one comes from our friend and one fellow English teacher, Roshan, shown on the left while we were in The Gambia:
A thief went out every night on his rounds of robbing and stealing. One day his young son asked, “Papa, where do you go every night?”
The father replied, “Come with me tonight, Son. I will show you what I do.”
That night, father and son went to a part of the city where people lived in expensive homes. The father told the boy, “Tonight you will be my helper. You must look all around. Look left and right, and in front and behind this house.”
“Why, Papa? What is it that you do?” the boy asked.
“My job is very dangerous. I must steal from rich people so your mother and brothers and sisters have plenty of good food. That’s why I need you to look carefully all around.”
“But, Papa,” the boy responded, “Have you ever looked up?”

Word just in from the publishers of A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider. “We’ve put together a free, downloadable discussion guide for A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider that can be used by individuals, book clubs, small groups, or classes. Just click on the image of the cover below to either download the .pdf file or print it.”

Hot Apple Cider is a best-selling inspirational anthology with 45,000 copies in circulation. The sequel, A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider, was released on May 1, 2011. Both books make terrific gifts for someone in need of a little encouragement, or great reading for those who enjoy a variety of stories written by “real” people with real faith.

Stepping on Shore

On Friday, 22 July, 2011, Max Tucker walked to the ABWE Guest House near Banjul in The Gambia, West Africa as he did nearly every morning. He reminded my husband, Wally, and me of when we were to meet Tuckers and Child Evangelism Fellowship missionaries, Paul and Sandy Rog for supper that night. He spoke of Nola and his kids. He made a few jokes and we said, “See you later.”

At midday, Max went for a walk on the beach as he often did. This was more than just exercise. The beach walk was his praise and prayer time with the Lord. As he set foot on the sand in front of the Senegambia Hotel, he collapsed on the beach. A European tourist raced to where he lay. Hotel staff arrived and gave artificial respiration, but he was already gone. The European woman found his ID card and cell phone and hit the first recall button: Paul and Sandy Rog. The caller asked, “Are you a friend of Max Tucker?” When Paul replied that he was, the woman said, “He has collapsed on the beach.” Sandy phoned Max’s wife Nola who set off in the car with a water bottle thinking he was likely just dehydrated.

Soon after Nola arrived at the beach, Max was placed in an ambulance and taken to a local clinic. Wally and I rushed to the clinic as soon as the Rogs called us. I joined Nola in a doctor’s office where he gently explained that Max had a massive heart attack and would have suffered no pain. Nola climbed into the ambulance to say her goodbyes. The following hours are a blur of retrieving personal items and official documents, notifying the American Embassy, contacting the Tucker children in the United States, keeping in touch with the ABWE office, and getting to the major downtown hospital through processions and parades in connection with the July 22 national holiday. When we finally got to the hospital, we were first directed to a crowded Emergency Room where Max’s body was on a trolley surrounded by curtains. Nola stepped in to see him once again. I was told to go out to a shop to buy a plastic bag for his clothes. At a desk in a ward full of sick patients, Nola answered questions while a doctor filled in forms. We then were taken to the morgue. Death is never pretty, but in countries where embalming is not usually done, decisions have to be made very fast, and the niceties found in Western countries are missing.

The Rogs continued to help in many ways including remembering a local mortician—a rarity in The Gambia—whom they had met recently. This capable man handled all the details, and it became possible to wait until family members and ABWE administrators were able to arrive to share in the celebration of Max’s life.

Max walked along the shore of the Atlantic Ocean on Friday, July 22 until about 1:30 pm, then the words of Robert Selle’s song became reality:

 “Just think of stepping on shore, and finding it Heaven, of touching a hand and finding it God’s;
of breathing new air and finding it celestial; of waking up in glory and finding it home.”

Beach where Max and Nola strolled just days before his death at this spot.

 

Do all the Good You Can

“Time flies,” has never been truer. Wally and I have now been in The Gambia, West Africa since June 1^st and find ways to “Do good…”

Guest House

Inside the 10-foot cement wall enclosure, we have four fully furnished apartments and a separate house, an office unit, a grassy area, and a playground. Guests from eight mission agencies do their own cooking, but often forget this and that. So, we frequently hear “Konk, Konk,” (and a knock at the door) and questions such as, “May I borrow some cheese? Do you have an extra USB cord? or “Do you have some Aspirin?”

Learning Centre

The heart of the public ministry is in two rented rooms about a 10-minute walk away. Up until recently we walked down streets where sand covered your shoes. Last weekend it rained; it poured and roared, and the powdery sand turned in mud holes that splashed water over the car’s hubcaps and made for interesting walking.

The Learning Centre is used all week: Sunday –  Wally preaches; Jeannie teaches children

Tuesday and Thursdays —Conversational English classes for 8-12 people whose mother tongue may be French, Portuguese, Wolof, Mandingo, Fula, Jola, or Tukulor. We co-teach with Roshan from Nepal and Elvis from Cameroon.

Friday – Wally teaches “Bible Knowledge” to some who attend the English classes. Most are Muslim men.

Special Opportunities

• Ladies Bible Class- Jeannie began attending and is now teaching a weekly class made up of both seekers of the truth, and Christian workers.
• Helping staff member Emma (44-years old) learn to read. Yesterday, we used a recipe as the text: oat-meal-cook(ies) anyone?
• Wally spends time talking about the Bible with one of the watchmen who rotate shifts.

New Book – Singled Out

Just today it arrived: the book Wilf Roch and I have been working on for the past four  months. It’s Wilf’s story and he tells it this way:

For 41 years I really didn’t understand what it meant to be a Christian. I always thought if you believed in God and in Jesus Christ, you were a Christian, automatically. How foolish I was! I never took time to stop and think if I was actually going to Heaven. I didn’t honestly care that much and didn’t have a clear understanding of the plan of salvation. All this, in spite of the fact that my wife Carol, is a Christian, and I attended church with her from time to time. I guess I was too busy trying to make a living, a financially secure future for my family and me, to notice—or want to take notice—of her life and witness.

How many times the Lord tapped me on the shoulder, and I chose to ignore Him! I thought I could do everything myself. I knew that many of my job-related ventures would not meet with God’s approval, but I shrugged it off, rationalizing that I wasn’t doing that much wrong. If God didn’t agree with what I did for a living, He would have to take it away from me. I owned and operated a disc jockey company, catering to the secular world’s taste in music.

One day the “big” tap on the shoulder came. In January 1986, the RCMP swooped into my office unexpectedly and seized my music, files, and equipment and totally closed me down for investigation of alleged copyright infringement.

And that’s just the beginning. To find out more, order Singled Out from

www.essence-publishing.com or from Amazon.com

42 criminal charges!

“Something went off the rails here…it shouldn’t ever have happened to this guy…and it can never be rectified.”  Lawyer Gordon Kaiser

“What happened to you is part of Canadian history. This really needs to be written in a book.” Moira Brown of 100 Huntley Street

New Life

Our home is a condo apartment overlooking a park and the Thames River in London, Ontario, Canada. From now until late fall, however, we can hardly see the river; masses of trees block our view. Since we live on the sixth floor, we look down on the treetops. I’ve always hoped I could be there to see the buds pop out. It’s sort of like waiting for the seeds you’ve planted in your garden to spring into new life.
For much of my life in Bangladesh, I was the director of a literature production and distribution program. That is definitely a seed-sowing endeavor. You give out tracts or Bible correspondence courses, and sell books to individuals rarely hearing if these seeds sprout into faith. Sometimes we do hear, like the time a young man working in our office folded thousands of the final page of a salvation tract. By the time he talked to our press manager, he had memorized the plan of salvation and was ready to make a decision.
Spiritual life or natural life; both are special gifts from our loving heavenly Father.

Years ago my brother, Bruce Lockerbie, captured this thought in a poem he wrote for Children’s Day.

      Thank God for Trees
Each year as springtime blossoms sprout,
And warmer days appear, I say,
“This year I’ll watch the leaves pop out,
And see them growing as I play.”
But somehow I have never seen
When buds become bright leaves of green.

I wonder if perhaps a tree
Has ever thought, as it stood there,
I’ll grow my leaves, then wait and see
How many people really care,
Or bother to give thanks to Him
Who made my trunk, my leaf, my limb.

I hope that on this Children’s Day
Each one of us will make a vow
To thank our Father, when we pray,
For trees and leaves and branch and bow
That we may more attentive be
And praise God for each stately tree.

Daffodils and Cider

Looking from our 6^th floor condo apartment, I see view a sea of gold. It wasn’t always this way. On June 6, 2010, the London Home Builders Association and the Cancer Society opened the Cancer Survivors’ Garden in McKillop Park at the corner of Wonderland Road and Riverside Drive. We fought hard to save that corner from commercial buildings and rejoiced to attend the opening of this park which will serve as a place of celebration for survivors and hope and inspiration for those still on the journey.    Two weeks ago the area burst into a blaze of golden daffodils. Checking with our city Councillor, Paul Hubert, we learned that volunteers planted 5,500 donated bulbs last fall and now we are the benefactors looking down on five “belts” of blooms. With apologies to William Wordsworth:

“I wandered lonely (actually a busy corner) as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills, (actually a flat area)

When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, (the Thames River) beneath the trees, (London IS the forest city)

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

From daffodils to hot apple cider. A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider is now in print and is available at books stores and on Amazon.

On May 2, four of our five local authors had a book launch at the Lucan Library. (Left to right: Donna Fawcett, Ruth Smith Meyer, Jeannie, Denise Budd Rumble)

Of course, we served—hot apple cider.

A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider is HERE

“Whether the setting is a remote farm on the Prairies, a First Nations community in Canada’s Far North, a multi-cultural kindergarten in Toronto, a lonely highway in Nova Scotia, an isolation ward of a children’s hospital, a blinding snowstorm in Québec, or a crammed church auditorium in British Columbia—you’ll find these stories lingering in your mind as fresh evidences of God’s grace.”
Ginger Kolbaba, Founding Editor of Kyria.com, Christianity Today International

 You’ll find my snowstorm story, called “Life with a Capital L” on page 41.  The book is available at local bookstores, and at Amazon.com or Amazon.ca